bilingual

“I'm just a soul who's intentions are good

Oh Lord, please, don't let me be misunderstood.”

                             (Don’t let me be misunderstood, The Animals)

You know that feeling when you press the send button and cringe because you notice the message you just sent sounds wrong? Or when you walk away from a conversation and come up with a million better answers than the ones you just gave? Or when it takes you half an hour to write an email that would normally take you less than 5 minutes?

I get that a lot when I speak or write Finnish. I feel I'm more witty and natural when I talk in English, I tell better jokes in English. It also makes me feel slightly uncomfortable and sometimes nervous if I have to talk Finnish instead of English in situations where there are people I don’t know well. It gets easier the longer I live in Finland, but I still struggle to find all the right words in the right language almost on a daily basis.

I talked about this with my brother the other day.  We talk to each other mostly in English, and both feel English is our “emotional language” - the language that’s easier to use when you want to express something important. We suddenly realised: we’re bilingual! It seems so obvious now, but that explains so much and makes things so much easier.

Normally I feel I have to apologise for sounding silly or saying the wrong word, & then I go through a long explanation of how I've lived abroad and haven’t really lived in Finland so much & that’s why I say things that might not sound right. It's a lot of explaining to do.

From now on I will just say “I’m bilingual”.